A Question With an Answer Only Dead Men Know
by Ellex
Summary: Episode tag for 2x13 'Critical Mass': We're supposed to be better than that, aren't we?


Feedback: is always appreciated

Disclaimer: Stargate: Atlantis is not owned by me, nor do I make any material profit from this story.

A/N: This is a sort of sequel to Lacey McBain's story "Three E-mails", submitted to the LJ community sgaflashfic for the Documentation Challenge. Lacey was kind enough to give me permission to write a sequel months ago, and I finally finished it. I'm not sure it's strictly necessary to read her story first, but I strongly recommend it.

_Where can a dead man go?_

_A question with an answer_

_only dead men know._

_But I'm gonna bet they never_

_really feel at home_

_if they spent a lifetime_

_learning how to live in Rome._

-- **When In Rome**, Nickel Creek

He was vaguely aware of lying on a soft, flat surface, the slight pinch of a needle in the back of his hand, a murmur of voices somewhere nearby. The fresh taste of the air and the lack of vibration told him he was on Atlantis rather than the Daedalus, where the filtered, canned air dried out his sinuses.

Calvin Kavanagh drifted back to full consciousness slowly, weighted down by the weariness that had become entirely too familiar over the last month. Listening to the quiet sounds around him, he recognized the infirmary he'd spent so much time in lately.

His head was beginning to thump again, heralding another incredibly painful headache. In an attempt to ease it, he rolled slowly onto his side and brought his hands up to cradle his aching skull.

He'd felt the headache coming on earlier, when Weir was engaged in the farce she thought was an interrogation for the second time. He'd had to take off his glasses to deflect her attention from the fact that he couldn't focus on her face anymore, the migraine haloes distorting his vision.

"Dr. Kavanagh?"

He silently blessed Beckett for always being considerate enough to speak quietly when he was suffering from the increasingly frequent migraines. Prying his eyes open reluctantly, he squinted at the overly bright lights and swallowed to lubricate his throat.

"What happened?" he croaked.

Beckett immediately offered him a cup of water. Lifting his head and holding the cup was almost more than he could manage, and Beckett had to steady the base of the cup for him.

"Your blood pressure took a nosedive and you fainted. I did tell you to avoid stress. Why didn't you inform Dr. Weir of your condition?"

Calvin ignored Beckett's question and answered with one of his own. "What about the sabotage?"

Beckett heaved a sigh and checked his patient's vitals as he answered. "They got the codes to stop the explosion from Colonel Caldwell. He's been taken over by a Goa'uld. I understand Hermiod thinks the Asgard beaming technology can be used to remove it without harm to the Colonel."

Calvin couldn't stop the sardonic grin that spread across his mouth. "Typical. The man in charge of Earth's only intergalactic transport, compromised by the Goa'uld," he muttered.

"I can't blame them for suspecting you. Sending me that encrypted message from the Daedalus was not the behavior of someone with nothing to hide," Beckett said repressively.

Calvin laid his head back down on the pillow. "I know how it looks," he said flatly.

"I'm not comfortable with this, Dr. Kavanagh. I only agreed to keep your condition a secret because you were going back to Earth. Dr. Weir already knows one of the messages you sent was to me."

Calvin bolted upright, almost falling off the bed in his panic. "You didn't – she doesn't know, does she? Tell me she didn't read it –"

The room tilted, a vicious spike of agony rammed through his left eye and straight into his brain, and his stomach twisted, stealing his breath. All he could do was curl around the pain and wait for it to subside.

He could hear his own harsh, sobbing breaths, but couldn't stop them. Besides, Beckett had already seen him at his worst, even if his worst had never been quite this bad before.

"Carson?"

The voice penetrated the throbbing agony in his head and he tried even harder to stifle the sounds coming from his throat.

"I understand Dr. Kavanagh is still here?" he heard Weir ask from outside the privacy curtains separating his bed from the rest of the infirmary. "Carson, is there something I should know?"

It wasn't often that Calvin prayed to some formless, nameless deity that, in all probability, didn't even exist, but he found himself begging silently for Beckett to deflect her, to continue to keep his secret.

"Dr. Kavanagh is quite unwell. I'd rather not disturb him at the moment," Beckett replied.

"You said he'd only fainted. Carson, I need to know exactly what's going on here."

"I suppose…" Beckett started.

Anger gave Calvin the strength to push himself upright, to stagger from the bed through the curtains, where he had to clutch the neighboring bed so as not to fall over.

"It is none…of your business," he gasped, startling them. "I told you – I don't want anyone here to know," he hissed at Beckett. "I don't want their – their false pity."

"Dr. Kavanagh, you shouldn't be up," Beckett said firmly.

Calvin fixed him with as narrow a glare as he could manage between the pounding in his head and the slight fuzziness of his uncorrected eyesight, before shifting his gaze to Weir.

"I will be reporting your actions when I get back to Earth, Doctor Weir," he said hoarsely. He could hear his voice shaking, his legs trembling, and hated himself for showing any sign of weakness in front of her. "Torture of prisoners is prohibited by the Geneva Convention. I seldom agree with your policies and decisions, but I'd thought you at least had better ethics than that."

Her face went white, but her lips thinned, and he silently cursed himself for being stupid enough to tell her his intentions. If she'd order him tortured for information, she certainly wouldn't stop at covering her tracks by making sure he couldn't tell anyone. But he'd said it in front of Beckett, whom he felt fairly certain wouldn't go along with any scheme to silence him…but Beckett was only one man, and Weir had Sheppard and McKay on her side, and that Neanderthal with the dreadlocks who'd burst into the interrogation room with a knife in his hand.

"I had no choice!" she said hotly. "Ronon had orders only to intimidate you – he wasn't going to touch you. I didn't know what else to do – we were running out of time, and the only suspect we could find was you. You've always criticized everything I've done, every decision I've made – you were the only one whose behavior was suspicious." Beckett put a hand on her shoulder, but she shook him off.

"How do you know that – that wild man would have followed your orders? You don't _know_ him, you can't trust him – "

"I trust Ronon Dex more than I trust you." She was suddenly calm again, implacable and relentless. "As far as I'm concerned, he's already proven his loyalty and trustworthiness."

"Because he doesn't disagree with you? Because he doesn't voice his opinion? Wait, what am I talking about, the man hardly speaks at all. I doubt he has any real comprehension of what's going on around him –"

"He understood that we were running out of time. We couldn't open the Gate and there wasn't enough time to evacuate everyone to the mainland. I had to weigh your emotional trauma against the lives of everyone in this city. You tell me, Doctor Kavanagh, what should I have done?"

"Something – anything, but not that!" he said desperately.

"That isn't good enough!" she yelled. "Tell me - _what should I have done?"_

He stared at her, the analytical side of his mind telling him that it was a fair question while the emotional side could only repeat that torture – even the threat of it – no matter the cause, was wrong.

"You see?" she said coldly, calmly. "If you can't give me a viable alternative, don't stand there and tell me what I did was wrong. If you'd told me what was going on in the first place - that those encrypted messages were just goodbyes to Beckett and Lindsey and Zelenka - I would never have been put in the position where the only solution I could see was to have Ronon intimidate you into a confession. I'm very sorry that I had to order it done – I'm even sorrier now that I know you have a serious health condition – but you brought it on yourself."

He stared at her in disbelief, the issue momentarily forgotten. "You – you read the messages _after_ you knew about Caldwell – I can't believe –" he started slowly. He had the fleeting satisfaction of seeing her flinch, but that was quickly drowned in a flood of rage. "I can't believe you have the nerve," he snarled, "to stand here and – and –"

His stomach clenched again and sent a flood of bile surging up his esophagus. Calvin fell to his knees and retched, his throat burning. Involuntary tears blurred his vision even more as another spike of pain lanced through his head.

The shame of being seen like this was almost worse than the physical pain and weariness that had become his constant companions, but he couldn't halt the continuous dry heaves that brought up nothing but stringy gobs of mucus. His arms were all that were holding him up, and they were trembling so much that he was horribly aware that he was likely to fall face first into the mess he'd made.

Someone shoved a basin under his chin, and strong but gentle arms grasped his shoulders and kept him upright. He barely noticed the sting in his arm past all the other sensations, but the soothing coolness that slowly radiated outwards from it, calming his stomach and dulling the migraine, was a gratefully welcomed change.

He heard Beckett speaking as if from great distance, the words slow and muffled. "Help me get him on the bed. Dr. Weir, you need to leave. Dr. Kavanagh needs a little stress as possible. I'll update you on his condition later."

Weir protested – he couldn't quite make out the words but her tone of voice was clear enough – but Beckett growled, "Later, Elizabeth," at her. She must have gone because he didn't hear her speak again.

He would have liked to hold on to the righteous anger and outrage, but whatever Beckett had given him left Calvin unfocused and slowly drifting away.

hr

The medication kept him floating on the surface of a sea of pain. The dark waters beneath him flashed occasionally with glimpses of white sharks-teeth of agony, but they remained below the waves for the moment.

Low voices shattered the mental image, and Calvin became aware, for the second time that day, of the smooth surface of the pillow under his head, of the small sounds of the infirmary around him.

"I've made up my mind, Dr. Weir." Carson Beckett's voice was unusually cold. "Dr. Kavanagh has every right to want his condition kept confidential. The only person I've informed, apart from several specialists on Earth that I've referred him to, is the CMO on the Daedalus. I saw no reason to inform you earlier since Dr. Kavanagh was leaving Atlantis and intended to submit his resignation from the Stargate program upon arrival on Earth. As far as I'm concerned, I'm still bound by doctor/patient confidentiality in this matter."

"Carson – I had no choice, the lives of everyone on Atlantis were at risk –"

"You had your culprit," Beckett interrupted her. "You'd no excuse for reading those messages but curiosity. And now you'll just have to live with what you've learned – and what you haven't learned."

There was a long silence before Calvin heard Weir say quietly, "You're right." She paused. "Do you think…the message said there's no cure for – for his condition. Could you at least tell me – does that mean what I think it means? That it's –"

He didn't hear Beckett answer, but a moment later Weir gasped, "Oh, my god! Does he – have I made it worse?"

"No, I don't think so. This isn't the first time I've had to medicate him for a migraine, though it's the worst one he's had yet. But it's important that Dr. Kavanagh avoid any undue stress. His condition makes him prone to migraines, and stress just exacerbates the problem."

"If you think it's necessary, we could probably spare the power to open a wormhole to send him back to Earth immediately," Weir spoke so quietly that Calvin could barely hear her.

"It's a nice thought, but wait until we see how the procedure with Colonel Caldwell goes. If there are complications, we may need to send him back to the SGC very quickly. We can send Dr. Kavanagh with him, if that's the case. Otherwise, the slow trip back on the Daedalus will be beneficial to both of them, I think. Give them a chance to rest before they have to start answering questions."

"Please keep me informed?" She sounded tentative.

"Of course. You _are_ the head of the expedition." A moment later, Beckett continued softly, "It's been a long day, Elizabeth. You need to rest, too."

He drifted away again for a while in the ensuing silence, happy not to have to feel anything under the blanketing influence of whatever Beckett had given him. It was easy to see, now, why some people craved morphine, marijuana, alcohol. When your body and your thoughts gave you nothing but pain, day after day, and you could see no future without that pain, after a while you'd do anything not to feel it anymore.

Calvin hadn't liked his life for a long time, even before Beckett's terrifying diagnosis of the cause of his increasing fatigue and the miserable headaches that had been plaguing him. Coming to Atlantis hadn't helped – he couldn't seem to join the camaraderie he saw around him, couldn't understand the foolish penchant everyone seemed to have for putting themselves or others in danger in order to save a few individuals. They didn't seem to understand that they were _all_ expendable – even McKay – otherwise, they would never have been permitted to leave Earth on a trip with a better than 50 chance of failure, and no definite way home. And no one else seemed to understand that the rules, the procedures, were there for a reason: to help them keep a grip on civilization, on their humanity. To prevent exactly the kind of thing that had happened to him in that interrogation room from happening to anyone else.

"Doctor Kavanagh?"

Calvin couldn't seem to open his eyes, but he managed to turn his head a little and whisper, "Yeah."

"How are you feeling?" Beckett murmured, so softly Calvin could hardly hear him. It was still enough to make him wince.

"Tired." A thought occurred to him. "Has – has Doctor Lindsey – have you seen –"

"I'm sorry," Beckett sounded like he really meant it, "Dr. Lindsey was…very upset when you left. She volunteered for the next off-world mission, and they left the day after the Daedalus did. Her team isn't back yet – they aren't expected for several days. She hasn't seen the message you sent from the Daedalus."

"Does she know..." he couldn't find the right words in his exhaustion. It was hard enough to keep a hold on what he wanted to ask, much less the words to express it and the strength to say them out loud.

"No, I hadn't the chance to tell her about your condition," Beckett said gently. "I'm sure if she were here, she'd have come to see you."

"No…no, it's better this way. I don't – I couldn't…" His head was beginning to throb again, and the words he wanted to say were hard to find through the pain.

"If you're still here when she comes back, do you want me to ask her to come see you?"

It was tempting – Calvin badly wanted the opportunity to explain himself to her, but there would be tears, and it was so much simpler to let her continue to think he'd abandoned both her and Atlantis. He'd never cared before that most people thought he was a jerk, so why start now? She'd get over it faster if she hated him.

"No. Don't tell her anything. Ask – ask Zelenka to erase the message I sent from the Daedalus, too."

"Are you sure, lad? She'll understand why you're leaving Atlantis if you tell her – "

"_No_," Calvin ground it out, making his head ache even more. "It's easier this way – easier for everyone."

He heard Beckett sigh heavily. "Aye, I suppose it is, though I'm not sure it's right, or fair."

Prying his eyes open, he looked up into the face of the one person he felt able to confide in. "Do you think – was she right? Was Weir right, to do…it's illegal, and – and morally wrong, but…she's put the whole city in danger to save just a few people, and then she ordered that alien – in order to save the whole city. That's why we have laws, why we have rules, so people can't just...the decisions she makes aren't..." His mind wouldn't focus, his thoughts forming and dissolving before he could grope for the words to express them. "We – we're supposed to be better than that – aren't we?"

Beckett stared at him. "Dear lord, I never thought I'd be having this conversation with you, of all people! I don't know, Doctor Kavanagh. I just don't know. I'm not entirely sure about my own actions, here in Atlantis – if I've done the right thing, if I've upheld the principles of my profession: to heal, and not to harm. All I can say is that we do what seems right at the time, or at least, try to pick the lesser evil. And sometimes, we make the wrong decision – none of us is infallible." He sighed. "We're in another galaxy, Doctor Kavanagh. We're fighting enemies that don't see us as – as _people_, just as food, or tools to be used. It's all very well to say 'this is right, and this is wrong, and we won't do what's wrong', but – life isn't as black and white as that on Earth, much less here. So I don't know. I'm sorry for that – I wish I had the answer for you, but I just don't know."

Kavanagh's eyes had closed again, and the medication was beginning to let him drift away from the pain in his head again, but he heard Beckett pause, then continue softly, "All I can manage is to keep on doing what seems right at the time, and I'm not such a brave man that I'd give my life for my ideals."

"No," Calvin whispered tiredly, "neither am I."

fin


End file.
